On 28 Jan 2006 at 7:17, dhbailey wrote: > There are many more composers over the past century than just > Schoenberg. And audiences respond very favorably to many of them, if > they're just given a chance to hear the music.
While what you say is certainly true, there's an unintended knock at Schoenberg (intended to represent what the audiences think, not what David Bailey thinks), and I think Schoenberg definitely gets a bum rap. If you actually known any significant body of his work, you'd recognize that there's an enormous variety of styles and sounds, even in the serial works, and the reputation for severity is completely undeserved, in my opinion. While I wouldn't say that Schoenberg's music overall is "easily accessible," it ain't that tough. And film scores have been using the kinds of sounds Schoenberg used since almost immediately after Schoenberg created them, so audiences really already have the sound in their vocabulary. So, to me, resistance to Schoenberg's music seems petulant. That is not to say that I'd think it wise to program his entire oeuvre in single orchestra season, but I'm sure it would be quite an interesting experience to hear all his music in a short span, given an audience with open ears. I'd expect that most who don't really know Schoenberg's music would come away surprised at how much of it was interesting and likable, and how great a variety there is. But the problem is that many of these ears are closed just because of the reputation the music has. Maybe the answer really is finding completely new audiences who don't bring that closedmindedness to the concert hall. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
